Wafers are manufactured by highly complicated manufacturing processes. These manufacturing processes should be monitored in order to ensure the quality of the wafers.
A wafer is translated during the monitoring process by a heavy movable stage that weighs few hundred of kilograms. The heavy movable stage has a limited speed.
The monitoring process may require charging elements of the wafer, waiting a predefined period, and imaging the elements of the wafer.
When the predefined period is relatively long (for example more than half a minute), the monitoring process has to be halted until the predefined process ends. Alternatively, during the predefined period the wafer is moved by the heavy movable stage along a substantial distance and the heavy movable stage has to perform a flyback operation along the entire substantial distance. This flyback operation is relatively long and also reduced the throughput of the monitoring process.
There is a growing need to provide an efficient monitoring process.